The Nerd List - February 2015

February, you have possibly been the least productive month I’ve ever had to suffer through. And I suppose I can’t really blame my total lack of reading, writing and working on my matric dance, but I’m going to anyway. There are still traces of emotional trauma and exhaustion (as well as excitement, I suppose) swimming around in my bloodstream, and I swear I’m still finding glitter in my hair – although I’m not entirely sure how it got there.

Books

Books I’ve Read:

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (Goodreads)

A History of Loneliness by John Boyne (Goodreads)

Book of the month

This book is so important. I could go on for ages about how incredible Boyne’s writing is and how the UN needs to recruit him to educate a couple of people in power. Seriously, every singe person on earth needs to read A History of Loneliness – it is so powerful and meaningful, plus it has a whole load of controversial commentary on the Catholic church, so if you like drama (as I do), you’ll love it to bits.

Character of the month

I hated every single character in Disgrace, and couldn’t understand a single one of their actions. And A History of Loneliness doesn’t exactly have many role-model-worthy characters deserving of this award… So I’m going to be extra pretentious and refuse to award character of the month to a character from a book, and instead I’ll give it to Agent Carter (from the TV series) because she’s my ultimate role model at the moment and gives me hope for the world.

Quote of the month

“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Moments

Fangirl/Facepalm moment of the month

Because February is such a special month (not really) and I’ve already broken one tradition in this Nerd List already, I’ve merged the fangirl and facepalm moments. Truth be told, my matric dance was ultimately both immensely exciting and lovely, and horrifically stressful. It was a night of total contradictions: I looked and felt pretty, but I felt too dolled up to be entirely myself; I had an incredible time, but my dress was annoying and my shoes hurt my feet; I didn’t want it to end because I was having fun, but I was tired and longed for the comfort of my bed. I’m still trying to figure out all my mixed emotions about the evening, but I would be lying if I said the night wasn’t pretty magical.

Music

Album of the month

Ella Henderson’s Chapter One is such an incredible album. It’s so melodious and soothing and catchy all at once – perfect easy listening that will never fail to put me in a good mood. Every time I listen to it I want to go sit down at my piano and sing – and then I realize I can’t sing so I just settle for playing Ella Henderson’s album so loud I can’t hear my own voice…

Song of the month

I’m A Mess - Ed Sheeran.

Lyric of the month

“Don’t let the fear keep you from climbing.”

- Ella Henderson, Giants

Existential Crisis Mode: Activated

It’s only five hours into half-term break and I’m already having my first mental breakdown of the long weekend. Honestly, I expected so much more from myself – I thought my over-worked mind would at least have the decency to wait until around 2 a.m. tomorrow morning before I was hit with the “Oh God I’m only one sixth of the way through matric and I’m already dying” avalanche of thoughts.

It wasn’t even that I had a huge workload that has set off my latest “let’s just remember how small I am in the huge scheme of things” crisis. It’s that I’m stuck in the middle of Magaliesburg, armed with only my laptop, a useless cellphone and my worn copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (which I swore I would finish this weekend if it killed me). So what’s the issue, you ask? What could possibly have triggered this “crisis” of which you speak? And what, pray tell, makes it so extreme that it inspired a blog?

Well, firstly I’m so not-in-the-right-frame-of-mind that it took me four tries to figure out whether to use “prey” or “pray” in that last sentence. Secondly, I’ve just answered the last question I asked myself first – something highly illogical considering we still haven’t figured out why I’m having this major crisis. Thirdly, did the previous point even make sense? I can’t tell. Fourthly, wait… is fourthly even a word?

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM WITH MY BRAIN AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT?

Anyway. Let’s just take a few steps back because I think I’ve thoroughly confused myself and gotten lost along a path I wasn’t even planning on taking – oh, hold up. That’s the whole issue in the first place isn’t it?

So back to the beginning: My latest and greatest “crisis” was triggered by the entirely self-inflicted thought that I would award myself with an entire afternoon to do anything I wanted. I promised myself that I would not let myself touch a single piece of schoolwork until tomorrow morning, and that I would not even think about that English film essay just waiting to be planned and written and scrapped and rewritten and cried over several times.

This wonderfully intelligent and well-meant plan didn’t work out so well when I discovered, after fifteen whole minutes of indulging in thoughts of what I could possibly do, that I had absolutely zero motivation to do anything.

So basically, I was bored. Simple. Except – BAM – add a few hormones, a body that hasn’t slept properly in just over a month, and a brain that’s still trying to figure out what “holiday” really means… Instant existential crisis.

Oh my word I don’t even know what I should do with myself for a couple of hours in one afternoon how am I supposed to decide what to do with myself after I finish school IF I even finish school wait didn’t I promise myself I wouldn’t even think about school today except that when I try not to think about school I can’t even think about anything because that’s how centered my life is on an institution that brings me nothing but pain and stress and heartache but also an extremely overpriced education that might just be useful to me in the future but not really because it’s a tradition kept in place by a society that tells us to sit in a building for twelve years and then get a job and pay for our children to sit in a building for twelve years so that they can get a job and pay for their children to sit in a building for twelve years when we could pretty much all live in harmony and farm our own food and have no form of currency and just barter for the things we need but America would never allow that because Capitalism is destroying all the hope in the world and is Communism even such a bad thing maybe I should move to China but then how am I going to pay to get there because I still have to finish my twelfth year in a building to get a job to receive income to pay taxes to fund the same institutions that teach us we have to go through this stupid process in the first place…

And so on and so forth.

Cue me lying on the floor listening to sad music and looking down on my life in utter misery.

But now I’m here writing this, which ultimately solved the problem of my boredom in the first place, so I suppose we can consider my existential crisis for the day officially over.

I just realized that ultimately this entire blog was totally without a point.

(Much like my life.)

(Oh my word, Amy, calm down life isn’t even that bad – you were bored, get over it.)

(I get the feeling that after I’ve posted this I’m just going to be stuck in the original situation again. Better start scouring the hotel for things to read that won’t send me into a state of mild depression.)

(…I am so going to regret posting this in the morning. Eh… Consider this blog as a glimpse into the mind of a 21^st century teenager when faced with the unavoidable and incomprehensive concept of having nothing to do. It’s pitiful.)